Chapter 17: The Daytime Thief Cannot Trust Her Own Night

“The daytime me is completely fine and energetic, but…”

“…Yes?”

“I don’t really know what the nighttime me is doing. …Can I consult with you about that for a bit?”

Roux, the thief girl, said this with a friendly smile. At the unsettling ring contained within those words, I straightened my posture just a bit.

“Yes, I don’t mind. A complicated discussion out here wouldn’t do, so please come into the back room.”

“Yay! Thank you, receptionist-san!”

“I’m Nagi.”

“Nagi-onii-san, then! Nice to meet you!”

With nimble movements, Roux slipped past the side of the counter and headed toward the small consultation room. Her sense of physical distance was close. Moreover, there was absolutely no wasted sound in her footsteps. She was definitely a seasoned professional thief.

As I was about to follow after her, I felt an intense pressure from behind. Turning around, I saw Lise glaring from her fixed position at a forty-five-degree angle to the counter, and Fran glaring from the shadow of a pillar a short distance away. Both were staring daggers at Roux’s retreating back, looking as if they were gazing at their parents’ sworn enemy.

“…Nagi. Who is that girl?”

Lise growled in a low voice. Her right hand was already resting on the hilt of her sword.

“A new client. However, her method of establishing personal space with Nagi is extremely inappropriate.”

Fran, too, was tapping the tip of her staff against the floor. Tap, tap.

“Both of you, stop.”

I formed a T with both hands.

“She is a new client. Do not intimidate her, and do not deploy magic circles. I am going to do my job, so please stand by quietly.”

Receiving their dissatisfied glares on my back, I entered the small room and closed the door halfway.

Roux was already sitting in a chair, but she was leaning back against the backrest, then leaning forward over the desk, utterly unable to settle down.

“Now then, Roux-san.”

“Just Roux is fine!”

“Then, Roux. Regarding what you said earlier about ‘not knowing what your nighttime self is doing,’ could you tell me specifically what that means?”

When I asked, Roux tilted her head, letting out an “Umm.”

“For some reason, when I wake up in the morning, my memories of the previous night are often completely gone.”

“Your memories are gone?”

“Yeah. Around the time after I eat dinner… the next thing I know, I’m already in bed the next morning, kinda like that.”

Roux laughed brightly with a hehe.

“At first, you know, I thought I was just half-asleep. A thief’s job involves a lot of middle-of-the-night work, so I figured I just got tired and fell asleep.”

“But you think otherwise now?”

“Yeah. Because when I wake up in the morning, there are things next to my bed that I have no memory of.”

Roux took a single dagger from the pouch at her waist and placed it on the desk. It was a piece with fine decorations on the hilt, looking to be quite an expensive item.

“I found this by my pillow when I woke up three mornings ago. I don’t remember buying anything this expensive, and I don’t have any memory of stealing it, either.”

“…I see.”

“Also, the soles of my boots will be covered in mud, or the silver coins in my wallet will have arbitrarily increased or decreased. The clincher was yesterday.”

Roux lowered her voice just a bit.

“The old man who works as an information broker in the back alleys told me, ‘You had a different look in your eyes last night — it was scary. Good work out there.'”

“…”

“Even though I was supposed to be at home last night.”

After talking all at once up to that point, Roux laughed once again, saying, “Ahaha.”

“I was thinking maybe it’s like sleepwalking, and I’m unconsciously taking on dangerous jobs in the middle of the night. It’s hilarious, right!”

She was trying to laugh it off. However, her hands resting on the desk were trembling faintly. Deep within her smiling eyes, a definitive “terror” was plastered.

Her nighttime self was moving on its own, completely out of her reach. Interacting with unknown people, doing unknown jobs, and bringing back unknown items. It must have been a terrifying sensation — as if half of her existence was being hijacked by someone who wasn’t her.

(A curse, or spirit possession? Or, in the terminology of my previous life’s knowledge, dissociative identity disorder?)

As long as magic existed in this different world, magical factors couldn’t be ruled out. But whatever the cause, what was tormenting her the most right now was this “unidentifiable terror” and the “question of responsibility.”

“…It’s not hilarious.”

I said in a deliberately quiet, flat voice.

“I think that is a very terrifying thing.”

Roux’s laughter stopped completely.

“…Eh?”

“Your own body is moving without your knowledge. If your nighttime self was hurting someone… If she was committing an irreversible crime… does the responsibility for that fall on you? Thinking about that makes you terrified, doesn’t it.”

When I put the core of the anxiety she carried into words, Roux’s eyes widened dramatically. And then, the smile she had been forcing crumbled into pieces.

“…!”

Roux covered her face with her trembling hands.

“…It’s scary.”

A voice that sounded like it might disappear leaked through the gaps between her fingers.

“It’s scary… I don’t know what I’m doing. Even when I ask my friends, they just laugh and say, ‘You just drank too much, didn’t you?’ …No one will properly listen to me.”

“I won’t laugh.”

“…Ugh, sob…”

I didn’t rush her, simply waiting for her to calm down.

Unlike Lise, she wasn’t afraid of being abandoned. Unlike Fran, she wasn’t afraid of resting. Roux’s terror was a “distrust of her own identity.”

Eventually, after taking a small, deep breath, Roux raised her face. Her eyes were a little red.

“…Nagi-onii-san, you’re amazing.”

“I’m not amazing. I’m just a receptionist.”

“You didn’t call me crazy — you actually believed me and listened.”

Roux turned a profoundly relieved, and slightly clinging, gaze toward me. Then, she leaned forward forcefully and squeezed my hand tightly with both of hers.

“Is it okay if I rely on you? Will you figure out what my nighttime self is doing with me?”

“Yes. Let’s organize this together. We’ll start by confirming the facts.”

“Yay! I love you, Nagi-onii-san!”

Still holding my hand, Roux brought her face closer. The distance was physically close.

Bang!!

At that exact moment, the half-open door was kicked open from the outside.

“You have exceeded your interview time!!”

“Don’t touch Nagi so casually, you thieving cat!!”

Fran, with ice magic radiating from her, and Lise, with her wooden sword at the ready, burst into the small room with demonic expressions.

“Hyaa?!”

“Both of you! I just wrote on the poster that bursting in is prohibited!”

Roux hid behind my back in surprise, and the vigilance — and jealousy — of the two existing heroines exploded. Ah, geez. Why does it get so noisy like this every time a new client arrives?

While desperately appeasing the two of them, I gave Roux a simple instruction — “For today, just practice leaving a memo of your condition before you go to sleep” — and somehow managed to disperse the gathering.

＊　＊　＊

Then, that night. The time when the sun had completely set and the guild’s business hours had ended.

While putting away the documents on the cluttered counter, I was turning Roux’s consultation over in my mind. Severed memories. Investigating the cause was necessary, but first, it seemed I would need to establish some “practical coordination” to prevent her daily life from falling apart.

“…Should I lock up and go home?”

It was the moment I moved to extinguish the flame of the lamp.

“——Good evening.”

A voice came from behind me.

Shiver. A sharp chill ran down my spine, as if a cold blade had been pressed against my neck.

There was no sound of the guild’s doors opening. No footsteps, not even a presence — I hadn’t sensed anything at all.

I slowly turned around. A single girl was standing there.

Flaxen hair. Light leather armor. The small pouches and short dagger hanging at her waist. She had the exact same figure and appearance as the “Roux” who had come during the day.

However, the air she wore was definitively different.

If the daytime her was a cat basking in the sun, the girl standing before me now was a ruthless black panther lurking in the dark night. Her eyes, stripped of all emotion, possessed a bottomless depth as cold as ice. Just being pierced by that gaze caused my heart to sound an alarm and race.

The girl walked right up to me without making a single sound, and the corners of her thin lips curled up faintly.

“…I hear the daytime me was in your care.”

That voice was terribly quiet, carrying an absolute coldness that permitted no argument.